By the way: If somebody is interested in Swiss German you may want to check this site: http://eldrid.ch/switzerland.htm . It's a quick guide to Swiss German by a lady from Norway.
Tom
And there was an initiative in the canton of Zurich to make Swiss German the standard language at kindergarten even High German was obligatory only during 1/3 of the time before. The voters except the ones in the city of Zurich said yes. So High German is banned from kindergarten by now...
Many Swiss - maybe especially but not only the older ones - have a kind of aversion to High German - and Germans
If your goal is to learn textbook High German, it will go faster in Germany. If your goal is to immerse yourself in Swiss culture and slowly learn German mixed with Swiss German, then you will definitely enjoy Switzerland. If you want to be on the border but more immersed in High German, how about Konstanz? You'll get the best of both worlds.
Now I'm curious ... what kind of situation are you in that you can decide where to live regardless of permits, relative expense, etc.?
In Germany, you find out very quickly where people are from, it be they have trained accent-free Hochdeutsch. There are people that just have a neutral tone to their German. The northern Germans can sound just "northern", and that's a large area. Dialects are less an obsession than in Switzerland, High German is "coloured" or "flavoured" but real hard core dialect speakers are getting older. The dialects per se are as far off in wilderness as Swiss German. I challenge you to understand spoken deep Hessisch or country side Eastern Franconian, linguistically supposed to be close to High German.
In the Canton of Zurich, the guidelines for schools about High German in the 1950ies and 60ies were very strict, with dialect only allowed for gymnastics and on excursions but not during the lessons. This became a bit neglected later on, but two years ago, the Zurich Cantonal government stiffened the rules back again. And do not forget that
- newspapers
- magazines
- books
- business letters
- private letters
- even private notes
- instruction manuals
- advertisements
- the declaration on any kind of merchandise
- info about events
is all done in High German
************************************************** *****************
If you cross the border from Schaffhausen into neighbouring German areas, the sounds and accents remain fairly similar. When you travel between Stein-am-Rhein you will meet a rich variety of local dialects on both sides of the border. If you travel along the Rhine from the Bodensee (Lake of Constance) upwards you can see that the St. Galler Rheintalerisch and the Vorarlbergisch are almost the same.
At the Migros up the road, they speak local dialect, I speak Italian, no problem. At the local Denner, most speak Italian, some speak various dialects. My wife speaks either, depending on her mood, as did her mother.
Meanwhile, on a business trip to Sweden a decade or so ago, I asked my colleagues why they were speaking Italian to each other (when not speaking French with me, as my Italian sucked back then). They said it was because they couldn't understand each other's dialect, so they stuck with Italian. Now they've moved to Ticinese dialect (basically, generic Lombardian), but most rarely speak their local one.
Different strokes.
Tom
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the political map of the German Empire, incorporating the Kingdom of Prussia amazingly shows the full picture, with Sachsen/Saxonia part of the South
[](http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Deutsches_Reich_%28Karte%29_Preu%C3%9Fen.svg&filetimestamp=20070629151659)
interesting is to see that the old state of Hohenzollern, origin of the Prussian kings and German emperors of course was linked to Prussia
For example, the hard 'r', the hard 'ch', 'kh' instead of 'k' etc...
I think she thought she was making progress with my 7 year old last school year until he spent the Summer in Zürich playing with his Swiss friends - methinks she'll have to beat it out of him
Me, I'm strictly Zürich speak and too auld to change
High German really is a foreign language for the Swiss. It's a relatively straightforward one for them, as the underlying grammatical structure is very similar, but it is still their second language, and one spoken with a widely varied accent. I am reminded of this every time I go on a business trip into Germany, especially a major city, and I suddenly find everyone MUCH easier to understand. That said - I CAN understand the Swiss speaking High German, but it took me a few weeks to get it. The hard part is when they are speaking Swiss German, and you think it should be High German and your brain is struggling to parse it.
Swiss German is simply hopeless to learn from where you are. You need to live in whichever town your going to live, and immerse yourself with the local dialect to have any hope. Just focus on getting very good at what you are studying, it will help you, and there will be an adaptation. But it's eminently doable.
Admitted, it may be irritating for you that somebody makes the following notes on a sheet of paper
- Kostenloser Service
- Aktuelle Menus
- Büro- und Hauslieferung
and when you ask about will repeat it as
- än choschteloose Särviss
- aktuelli Menüs
- Büro- und Huusliferig
What I meant by comment was reflected more by my employees were telling me about how hard the High German is for them, as they implore me to work more on my Swiss German. But those are the production guys, many of whom don't even have passports - so they rarely speak High German at all. The point I'm making is that one shouldn't think of Swiss German as some sort of secret treehouse invented lingo. It's an honest, seaparate language, and speaking High German doesn't just "come with" being Swiss. It something they worked on, and it's not their normal preference if it's their choice.
Back to schools. Everything starts with Swiss German in Primary Class 1, but is gradually turned over into High German. And everything is changed into High German already in the first year, and up from the first day of the 2nd Primary Class, you are not allowed to speak dialect during ALL lessons.
So, WHERE were your "production people" in school-times ?
To have it with Queen Victoria "I do not feeling amused". Your theory of Swiss German being a kind of whatever languageS, you deny Switzerland of speaking "German" and so rob Switzerland of an important part of its national identity, and this is not acceptable, sorry
First, I think most teachers (and all german teachers) I had had a barely recognizable accent when speaking high german, and second, it really depends how long you learn german, as the longer you learn it, the more you get the hang of it.
Point is, I think you'll have a slight english accent rather than a swiss accent when speaking german, as the accent really depends on your native language
Wollishofener , I've had the same experience as dmay , of some Swiss people refusing to speak High German or struggling to speak it with me, probably because they actually haven't spoken it since their school days. At our parents' evening the teacher spoke in High German for my sake, as did most of the parents bar two men, who did their bit in Swiss-German despite knowing that at least one person present did not understand it because the teacher had said so at the start. Either they can't speak Hochdeutsch well/confidently, or they feel that foreigners like myself shouldn't be pandered to. In this case, given our backwoods area, I suspect both . But 2 people was ten percent of those present, and they certainly didn't seem to feel that High German was part of their national identity.
Some of the Swiss on this forum have also mentioned that they have to think before opening their mouths in High German, and I've had other Swiss people tell me that they don't feel at all comfortable with it despite doing it at school. This absolutely makes sense to me as a linguist: being able to read and write something doesn't mean you can necessarily speak it, as I'm sure you have experienced yourself at some point in the past with English. It's a question of passive versus active vocabulary. Being able to read government letters and newspapers and fill in tax forms in High German you learnt at school doesn't mean it's (as good as) a first language to you. I can do all those things quite happily in German, but still don't speak with anything like the same fluency I read with. In fact, I was schooled entirely in French from age 7 (it's not my mother-tongue) and was perfectly fluent with excellent spelling - exactly like a Swiss kid being schooled in High German - but when I come to speak it now, only 7 years since I last lived in that environment, I find it's rusty. It isn't impossible, but it's not my mother-tongue, I'm not 100% fluent any more, there are many words and turns of phrase I have forgotten. The same can be true for any one of your compatriots, if they don't need to use High German regularly, and many of them don't, at least in my area which is mostly farmers. As you have said yourself, even the cantonal parliaments don't use High German (except Schaffhausen). My Swiss friend gets furious about it, she agrees with you that all Germanic Swiss should be able and willing to speak High German whenever called upon, and should not consider it a foreign language, and should not use Schwiizertütsch to exclude foreigners, but no matter how nice that would be, it really doesn't seem to be the real situation for everyone, even if it is for 80 or 90% of the locals including yourself.
Sorry for the off-topic, OP.
ETA: I agree with rayd3m about the accent. Either an English one, or an unplaceable "foreign" one if you already speak several other foreign languages fairly well, as they will also influence your pronunciation in German.